Post by Manu Leroy, OLY

HERE. WE. GO. 🚀 The Missing Link has arrived. 🔗 I am incredibly proud to announce that I'm launching The Missing Link together with Lisa De Croocq and Koen Bauwens. After spending seven years on the rights holder side as CMO and acting CEO of Royal Belgian Football Association, and building my media, brand, and marketing experience before that at Telenet group, it felt like the right moment to start something myself. Combined with experience on the agency side and my background as an Olympic athlete, I have had the opportunity to see sports and entertainment partnerships from every angle. That perspective has given me a clear understanding of what is needed to make partnerships work. The Missing Link was created by the three of us with a clear mission: to professionalize partnerships in sports and entertainment. We are convinced that there is significant room for improvement in the current sponsorship landscape. To challenge our own assumptions and sharpen our positioning, we surveyed more than 100 industry professionals on the current state of sponsorship. Their input confirmed what we were seeing in practice. We will be sharing the insights and conclusions from this research in the coming weeks. Our position, however, is already clear. We want to help brands turn partnerships into measurable business impact. This includes defining the right sponsorship strategy, identifying the right partners, negotiating solid KPI driven agreements, and evaluating performance through robust measurement frameworks. You can follow us here on LinkedIn. If you are curious to learn more about our approach, feel free to drop me a message. I am always happy to grab a coffee (or play a round of golf 😀) and explain what we are building and why!